April 3, 2010

Photo for Easter

I was reminded Thursday of a photograph I had intended to post here but never did. The photo was taken sometime in the spring of 2003. The mechanism by which I was incorporating photos into blog posts in 2003 was time-consuming, and I just never got around to taking advantage of the picture, which has been sitting on my Web server for seven years.

In January 2003, I bought a bird feeder, a tube feeder for niger seed intended to attract goldfinches. I wrote a brief post titled “Where Do They Come From?” The name referred to the fact that I had never knowingly seen goldfinches, and I was surprised that they showed up in numbers when I set up the feeder. That post included the picture below:

I was equally surprised a few months later, when goldfinches showed up in their spring and summer plumage. (Obviously, I really didn’t know a whole lot about goldfinches at the time.) This is what I had intended to illustrate with my heretofore unused photograph:

The weather here in Pittsburgh is becoming increasingly springlike, and the goldfinch feathers are getting brighter. It seems like a good time to post my picture of goldfinches in their more spectacular attire.